Full screen recommended.
Jeremiah Babe, PM 11/27/21:
"From Economic Collapse To Moral Collapse;
California Flash Mobs Spread Across Nation; Holiday Danger"
So, we rise from the rubble...
Saturday, November 27, 2021
"Market Risk is Rapidly Rising - Inflation has Wiped Out All Dollar Bargains"
Full screen recommended.
Dan, iAllegedly, PM 11/27/21:
"Market Risk is Rapidly Rising -
Inflation has Wiped Out All Dollar Bargains"
"Black Friday was an absolute disaster. The sales were off over 28% from 2019. So many experts are stepping forward and saying that the stock market is about to crumble worse than it did in 2000 with the dot com bust."
"Butterflies..."
"We are like butterflies who flutter for a day and think it's forever."
- Carl Sagan
Carl Sagan, "The Pale Blue Dot"
"The following excerpt from Carl Sagan's book "Pale Blue Dot" was inspired by an image taken, at Sagan's suggestion, by Voyager 1 on 14 February 1990. As the spacecraft was departing our planetary neighborhood for the fringes of the solar system, it turned it around for one last look at its home planet.
Voyager 1 was about 6.4 billion kilometers (4 billion miles) away, and approximately 32 degrees above the ecliptic plane, when it captured this portrait of our world. Caught in the center of scattered light rays (a result of taking the picture so close to the Sun), Earth appears as a tiny point of light, a crescent only 0.12 pixel in size."
"The Pale Blue Dot"
"Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there- on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.
Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.
The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.
It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known."
- Carl Sagan
"A Look to the Heavens"
"Messier's famous catalog, but definitely not one of the least. About 170,000 light-years across, this galaxy is enormous, almost twice the size of our own Milky Way. M101 was also one of the original spiral nebulae observed by Lord Rosse's large 19th century telescope, the Leviathan of Parsontown. Assembled from 51 exposures recorded by the Hubble Space Telescope in the 20th and 21st centuries, with additional data from ground based telescopes, this mosaic spans about 40,000 light-years across the central region of M101 in one of the highest definition spiral galaxy portraits ever released from Hubble.
The sharp image shows stunning features of the galaxy's face-on disk of stars and dust along with background galaxies, some visible right through M101 itself. Also known as the Pinwheel Galaxy, M101 lies within the boundaries of the northern constellation Ursa Major, about 25 million light-years away.”
Read Online: The Poet: T.S. Eliot, "Four Quartets"
“Little Gidding”, Excerpt
"We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;
At the source of the longest river
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the apple-tree.
Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.
Quick now, here, now, always -
A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flames are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.”
- T.S. Eliot
The "Little Gidding" is the last of T. S. Eliot's "Four Quartets,"
which you may freely read online here:
“How Are Things Going, Joe?”
"People are sad. People are broke. People are worried about money, people are worried that they're not enough and not amounting to anything and they don't feel good about themselves. People have rough times, and everybody's pretending it's not true, and we need to break that veneer."
- Eve Ensler
○
“You go up to a man, and you say, “How are things going, Joe?” and he says, “Oh fine, fine... couldn’t be better.” And you look into his eyes, and you see things really couldn’t be much worse. When you get right down to it, everybody’s having a perfectly lousy time of it, and I mean everybody. And the hell of it is, nothing seems to help much.”
- Kurt Vonnegut
The Poet: Jane Hirshfield, “The Task”
“The Task”
"It is a simple garment, this slipped-on world.
We wake into it daily - open eyes, braid hair -
a robe unfurled
in rose-silk flowering, then laid bare.
And yes, it is a simple enough task
we've taken on,
though also vast:
from dusk to dawn,
from dawn to dusk, to praise, and not
be blinded by the praising.
To lie like a cat in hot
sun, fur fully blazing,
and dream the mouse;
and to keep too the mouse's patient, waking watch
within the deep rooms of the house,
where the leaf-flocked
sunlight never reaches, but the earth still blooms.”
- Jane Hirshfield
"Curveballs..."
"Just when we think we figured things out, the universe throws us a curveball. So, we have to improvise. We find happiness in unexpected places. We find ourselves back to the things that matter the most. The universe is funny that way. Sometimes it just has a way of making sure we wind up exactly where we belong."
- "Dr. Meredith Grey", "Grey's Anatomy"
"It'll Do..."
Deputy Wendell: "It's a mess, ain't it, sheriff?"
Sheriff Bell: "If it ain't, it'll do till the mess gets here."
- "No Country For Old Men"
"Inflation..."
“Lenin is said to have declared that the best way to destroy the capitalist system was to debauch the currency. By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens. By this method they not only confiscate, but they confiscate arbitrarily; and, while the process impoverishes many, it actually enriches some. The sight of this arbitrary rearrangement of riches strikes not only at security, but at confidence in the equity of the existing distribution of wealth. Those to whom the system brings windfalls, beyond their deserts and even beyond their expectations or desires [the so-called wealthy "Elite"- CP], become 'profiteers,' who are the object of the hatred of the bourgeoisie [the nearly dead middle class- CP], whom the inflationism has impoverished, not less than of the proletariat [the always impoverished poor- CP].
As the inflation proceeds and the real value of the currency fluctuates wildly from month to month, all permanent relations between debtors and creditors, which form the ultimate foundation of capitalism, become so utterly disordered as to be almost meaningless; and the process of wealth-getting degenerates into a gamble and a lottery [Wall Street- CP].
Lenin was certainly right. There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose.”
"Martin Armstrong Warns: 'America Is Under Attack By Marxist Globalists'"
"Martin Armstrong Warns:
'America Is Under Attack By Marxist Globalists'"
by Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com
"Back in July, legendary geopolitical and financial cycle analyst Martin Armstrong boldly said, “The system has come to an end.” What are we seeing now? There is massive inflation, huge defaults of debt in China, a badly broken supply chain and a hostile government against “We the People” here in America. It sure looks like the end of this system is near.
Armstrong contends it is not an accident that all this is happening now to the United States because Marxist globalists want to overthrow our Constitutional form of government. Armstrong explains, “This is getting to be really absurd. Biden is the perfect President. I warned that this election had nothing to do with Trump versus Biden. It was Trump versus a foreign entity that was trying to take over the United States. Biden is absolutely the perfect President. They got their wish. They got somebody in there that really would not be able to figure out left from right.
I am not making derogatory statements against him. This isn’t even Biden’s agenda. You are lucky if he even understands what’s going on. It’s the people behind him. It you look at his polls, they are down to 33%. A politician wold normally care about that. You don’t see any change because he’s not the one doing this. They know he’s just a place holder. They are just moving their agenda through - period. The United States is being orchestrated from Geneva.
All this ‘Build Back Better’ stuff was a slogan created at Davos. The United States is under attack from a foreign entity.” Armstrong says his predictive Socrates computer program does not see the Marxist globalists succeeding. Armstrong says, “They think they can take over the world and create this fictional wonderland of Marxism. It’s not going to work. Our computer is showing that they have failed. In 2022, this whole thing is going to start blowing up. Bill Gates actually said that the vaccines don’t work. He said we are going to have to create a new sort of R&D. There is too much evidence now that the vaccines do not prevent you from getting Covid or spreading it. Data coming out of Israel shows the majority of people vaccinated are the majority of the people that are dying. Gates is being confronted with this behind the curtain.”
Armstrong says the Marxist globalists are trying to create a Great Depression. Why? Armstrong says, “The reason why they are trying to create a Great Depression is they are now desperate. "They created, in my opinion, this virus that numerous people I know behind the curtain were told a virus was coming. I think it was planted. I think it was created by a lab in China. This is all total B.S. It’s being used mainly to prevent people from traveling.”
Armstrong also says the Marxist globalists have a plan to default on all debt. Listen to how they are going to sell this to the public. Armstrong says, “They pretend they care about you. You won’t own anything. We are going to eliminate all mortgages, all credit card debt and you are going to be happy. Why? Because that’s the cover for them to default. They can’t default without wiping out everybody’s pension fund.”
Armstrong says rich people are buying tangible assets to get their money off the grid, and the little guy should be doing the same thing. This is why Armstrong says things such as art, collectibles, Bitcoin and gold are going up and will continue to do so. Armstrong says be careful with crypto currencies because, eventually, governments will have their own crypto currencies and will not allow competition."
Join Greg Hunter on Rumble as he goes One-on-One with Martin Armstrong, world renowned geopolitical and economic cycle expert. (What is written above is only a fraction of what is in the 61 min. interview.)
Friday, November 26, 2021
"What’s The Deal With Black Friday? Markets Crash"
Full screen recommended.
Dan, iAllegedly PM 11/26/21:
"What’s The Deal With Black Friday? Markets Crash"
"It’s time for Black Friday. People have been pent-up and want to go shopping to start the holiday season. Are there good deals out there? Are people spending money? The economy is in shambles."
"We Have Big Trouble Coming; Credit Cards Propping Up Economy; Losing Control Of Markets"
Jeremiah Babe, PM 11/26/21:
"We Have Big Trouble Coming; Credit Cards
Propping Up Economy; Losing Control Of Markets"
Gregory Mannarino, "Interview: A Medical Dr. Blows The Roof Off Of Everything: Dr. Harding"
Gregory Mannarino, PM 11/26/21:
"Interview: A Medical Dr. Blows The
Roof Off Of Everything: Dr. Harding"
"Streets of Philadelphia, Kensington Avenue, Thanksgiving Day 2021"
Full screen recommended.
"Streets of Philadelphia, Kensington Avenue,
Thanksgiving Day 2021"
"Violent crime and drug abuse in Philadelphia as a whole is a major problem. The city’s violent crime rate is higher than the national average and other similarly sized metropolitan areas. Also alarming is Philadelphia’s drug overdose rate. The number of drug overdose deaths in the city increased by 50% from 2013 to 2015, with more than twice as many deaths from drug overdoses as deaths from homicides in 2015. A big part of Philadelphia’s problems stem from the crime rate and drug abuse in Kensington.
Because of the high number of drugs in Kensington, the neighborhood has a drug crime rate of 3.57, the third-highest rate by neighborhood in Philadelphia. Like a lot of the country, a big part of this issue is a result of the opioid epidemic. Opioid abuse has skyrocketed over the last two decades in the United States and Philadelphia is no exception. Along with having a high rate of drug overdose deaths, 80% percent of Philadelphia’s overdose deaths involved opioids and Kensington is a big contributor to this number. This Philly neighborhood is purportedly the largest open-air narcotics market for heroin on the East Coast with many neighboring residents flocking to the area for heroin and other opioids. With such a high number of drugs in Kensington, many state and local officials have zoned in on this area to try and tackle Philadelphia’s problem."
○
Bruce Springsteen, "Streets of Philadelphia"
"Panic And Chaos Fast Spread As A New Covid Strain With Extremely High Number Of Mutations Emerges"
Full screen recommended.
"Panic And Chaos Fast Spread As A New Covid
Strain With Extremely High Number Of Mutations Emerges"
by Epic Economist
"Stocks are dropping like a rock in the global futures market as the world has suddenly started to freak out after a new virus strain, known as B.1.1529, was detected in South Africa. Scientists are alerting that it carries an "extremely high number" of mutations and is “completely very different” from previous variants, which can trigger further waves of disease by blocking the body’s defenses. According to the latest reports, so far 10 cases were confirmed in 3 different countries through genomic sequencing, and at least 100 more are suspected and await confirmation. Widespread panic is sweeping across several African and European countries as governments are already talking about new lockdowns, as the new strain "has sparked serious concern among some researchers because a number of the mutations may help the virus evade immunity," the Guardian reported.
Scientists revealed that the new B.1.1.529 variant has 32 mutations in the spike protein, which is the part of the virus that most vaccines use to prepare the immune system against the disease. This means that mutations in the spike protein compromise our immune cells' ability to actually attack the pathogen, decreasing our defenses and increasing the chance of complications, and becoming potentially lethal.
For now, while researchers are trying to figure out what the spike protein mutation cluster actually does, global markets are already in total chaos, as speculation that it will cause another global wave of infections continues to rise. That is to say when considering the available vaccines and the fact that B.1.1.529 may represent a completely new disease, most of the current shots may not work to prevent the disease given that the existing neutralizing antibodies won't be able to fight a virus with so many mutations.
Sadly, this tragedy is happening at a very convenient time for politicians around the world, who will probably use people's fear as a catalyst to enforce a new round of lockdowns and issue trillions more in government stimulus so that they can stay in power during the foreseeable future without a negative reaction from the public. That is already occurring to some extent in the U.K., where government officials announced plans to ban flights from South Africa and some neighboring countries, including Namibia, Lesotho, Eswatini, Zimbabwe, and Botswana. The travel restrictions will start being introduced today as a "precautionary measure to keep the spread of the new variant in check," Health Secretary Sajid Javid said. As of Sunday, all of these African countries will be put on the U.K.’s red list, and all travelers coming from them will have to quarantine in hotels upon arrival.
However, as research showed during multiple occasions in the past, travel bans do very little to stop the variants from spreading. But one thing that they actually do is fuel the public's frenzy over the new strain while politicians have more control over the narrative as they take advantage of the population's growing uncertainty. American market watchers say that the U.S. stock market didn't have enough time to react to the news just yet, but this could be the black swan event no one thought possible, leading to a bubble burst much sooner than expected. In essence, this heavily mutated variant that may cause another global tragedy and impact millions upon millions of lives is the scapegoat both central bankers and politicians have been desperately hoping for.
At the same time, if you think the global supply chain collapse was causing trouble, just wait until global travel bans, lockdowns and work restrictions start to be put in place again and you'll see that conditions will get alarmingly worse. Keeping in mind that the population's confidence in their governments has been collapsing in recent months, a global lockdown may restore the strength and the "savior" imagery of some political figures. It's safe to say that they will use the opportunity to issue much more artificial money and pumped into the system. Only this time, they won't be able to avert a crisis. They will be effectively sparking a burst of inflation that will make the current soaring prices look like Japan's deflationary debt trap. Now more than ever, we can say that the worst is yet to come."
"Why the ‘Make America Worse’ Bill Will Lead to Higher Inflation"
"Why the ‘Make America Worse’ Bill
Will Lead to Higher Inflation"
by Simon Black
"When Sultan Abdulmejid I of the Ottoman Empire declared war on Russia in the summer of 1854, he assumed it would be an easy victory that would restore his crumbling empire back to its former glory. But Abdulmejid’s dream never came true.
The Ottoman Empire was already in dire economic condition by the mid-1800s; Abdulmejid’s predecessor (and father) Mahmud II had presided over a major budget deficit, plus a devastating loss of territory. The Empire was shrinking and growing weaker. So when Russia tried to capitalize on this weakness by invading Ottoman territory in 1853, Abdulmejid refused to back down. He allied himself with Britain and France, both of whom wanted to check Russian power, and they all went to war.
This became known as the Crimean War. And it was exceptionally costly, both in blood and treasure. Abdulmejid was out of funds within a year. And in August of 1855, he turned to London bankers for a loan. Initially they extended a £5 million loan (worth roughly $750 million today) at an effective rate of 7.5%. That was a significant sum of money back then. But the money quickly ran out, so Abdulmejid had to borrow another £3 million shortly thereafter. The Russians were finally defeated in 1856. But the victory was so expensive that the Ottoman Empire was nearly bankrupt.
Abdulmejid sought another £5 million loan in 1858 (at a rate of nearly 10%), then 2 million francs from French banks in 1860, then another £8 million in 1862 at approximately 9%. Now, the Ottomans were excellent record keepers, and we have access to very detailed archives of their budgets and taxes. And these loans were so vast that interest payments were soon consuming roughly HALF of Ottoman tax revenue; the government had to borrow more money just to pay interest on the money they had already borrowed.
At that point the Ottoman government was running an extremely centralized economy; they regulated everything, down to the number of shops and merchants that were allowed to operate in each city. They also had state-run monopolies on goods ranging from tobacco to salt to olive oil. And they forbade their Muslim citizens from participating in certain industries altogether.
So they had excessive regulation. Excessive debt. Excessive money printing. Anti-competitive policies preventing people from working and producing. You can probably imagine the result: before long the Ottoman Empire was suffering a nasty bout of inflation. And in 1875, roughly two decades after the first loan, the government defaulted on its massive debt.
You don’t need a PhD in economics to understand that actions have consequences. And history is very clear that printing money, going into debt, and burdening an economy with anti-competitive regulations is NOT the path to prosperity. That brings me to the Build Back Better bill, or probably better referred to as the Make America Worse Act.
As I wrote to you yesterday, the bill will cost at least $1.7 trillion, on top of the $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill that was passed a few weeks ago. That’s nearly $4 trillion in total, which will mostly be funded by the central reserve essentially printing money.
Yesterday I explained that it’s not just about the money. $4 trillion in sensible investments would be money well spent. The problem is that these people don’t make sensible investments. And in yesterday’s letter I took you through one small example– the Job Corps, which will receive $1.5 billion from this bill. The Job Corps is a total failure. It might be a nice idea. But the agency’s own data shows that it is a money-losing program that has cost taxpayers billions. So what do they decide to do? Throw more money at it.
It’s genius! And just like the Ottoman Empire in the mid-1800s, this approach is extremely inflationary. Economies grow because more goods and services are being produced. This is a pretty simple concept. And inflation occurs whenever money is being injected into the system faster than the economy is growing.
That’s what happened to the Ottoman Empire; because of their insane regulatory system, production of goods and services was actually shrinking. Yet simultaneously the government was borrowing piles of cash from foreign banks and dumping it all into the economy. And this is most likely what’s going to happen with Build Back Better. They’re dumping $1.7 trillion into the economy, much of which is going to money-losing programs like the Job Corps. Yet simultaneously they’re making it more difficult for workers and businesses to produce goods and services.
Case in point– they’re more than doubling the budget for OSHA, the Occupational Safety Health Administration, for the purposes of “carrying out enforcement activities.” Presumably these funds will go towards hiring legions of inspectors to fine businesses for COVID violations. The amount that OSHA can fine a business will also rise 10X under this new law, to $70,000 per violation.
The real irony is that many businesses are already having a difficult time finding workers. Yet now the government is going to make things worse by hiring armies of new bureaucrats. This means there will be even fewer workers available for private companies to hire, and more government workers engaged in useless activities that don’t contribute anything to the economy.
The law also authorizes the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) can fine businesses, up to $100,000 per violation, for anyone who dares cross a labor union. They even go as far as to make the officers and directors of those businesses personally liable for union violations. The law goes on to create penalties for ‘Gig Economy’ businesses who pay workers as contractors (as opposed to employees).
The list goes on and on. The point is that they’re shoveling trillions of dollars into the economy, yet creating mountains of new anti-competitive regulations. The bill, after all, is nearly 2500 pages. I’ve written before that free market competition is one of the key forces that keeps inflation in check. Competition means that businesses have to work hard to deliver the highest quality products and services at low prices. Making it more difficult for businesses and workers to produce means reducing competition… which helps inflation spiral out of control. It’s no surprise that inflation is at a multi-decade high. And these sorts of laws aren’t going to make the situation any better."
- https://www.theburningplatform.com/
Gerald Celente, "African Virus Variant Plunges Market, Worst Is Yet To Come"
Full screen recommended.
Gerald Celente, PM 11/26/21:
"African Virus Variant Plunges Market,
Worst Is Yet To Come"
○
Related:
"A Look to the Heavens"
"Globular star cluster Omega Centauri, also known as NGC 5139, is some 15,000 light-years away. The cluster is packed with about 10 million stars much older than the Sun within a volume about 150 light-years in diameter. It's the largest and brightest of 200 or so known globular clusters that roam the halo of our Milky Way galaxy.
Though most star clusters consist of stars with the same age and composition, the enigmatic Omega Cen exhibits the presence of different stellar populations with a spread of ages and chemical abundances. In fact, Omega Cen may be the remnant core of a small galaxy merging with the Milky Way. Omega Centauri's red giant stars (with a yellowish hue) are easy to pick out in this sharp, color telescopic view."
"Perhaps Everything Terrible..."
“How should we be able to forget those ancient myths that are at the beginning of all peoples, the myths about dragons that at the last moment turn into princesses; perhaps all the dragons of our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us once beautiful and brave. Perhaps everything terrible is in its deepest being something helpless that wants help from us. So you must not be frightened if a sadness rises up before you larger than any you have ever seen; if a restiveness, like light and cloud shadows, passes over your hands and over all you do. You must think that something is happening with you, that life has not forgotten you, that it holds you in its hand; it will not let you fall.”
- Rainer Maria Rilke
“Are You Sane?”
“Are You Sane?”
by Charles Hugh Smith
“A sane person to an insane society must appear insane.”
– Kurt Vonnegut, “Welcome to the Monkey House”
“Madness has engulfed the entire world, with a concentration of power in the hands of a few psychopathic financial elite wielding an inordinate and dangerous expanse of power over the lives of the common man. They are a modern day version of Al Capone, except their weapons of choice aren’t machine guns, but a printing press, peddling debt, creating derivatives of mass destruction, and peddling heaping doses of disinformation. The contemporary criminal class wears Hermes suits, Rolex watches and diamond studded pinky rings, drops $500 to dine at Masa in NYC, travels by chauffeured limo, lives in $10 million NYC penthouse suites, occupies luxurious corner offices in hundred story glass towers, and spends weekends hobnobbing with the other financial elite at their villas in the Hamptons. They have nothing but utter contempt for the lowly peasants who depend upon a weekly paycheck to make ends meet. Why work when you can steal $1 or $2 billion from farmers with no consequences?
The willfully ignorant masses are kept at bay by the selling them a false dichotomy of Republicans versus Democrats, conservatives versus liberals, and capitalism versus socialism. The ruling class distracts the public with fake wars on poverty, drugs and terror, while using these storylines to further enrich themselves and keep the public alarmed and frightened. We’ve been “fighting” the wars on poverty and drugs for over four decades and poverty is at record levels, while drugs are easier to obtain than candy in a candy store. The war on terror is nothing more than a corporate arms dealer welfare plan. The end of the Cold War put a real crimp in the bottom lines of Lockheed Martin and the rest of the peddlers of death. 9/11 and the subsequent undeclared wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Syria, with Iran on the horizon, have been a godsend to the bottom lines of the corporations Eisenhower warned about in 1961.
In reality, the politicians are interchangeable and bought off by corporate and special interests. The people are sold a fable, and controlled opposition is the fairy tale. They perpetuate the welfare/warfare state that enriches Wall Street, the military industrial complex, the healthcare service complex, politically connected mega-corporations and the corporate media propaganda complex. The American people are given the illusion of choice by their keepers. The system is rigged. The real decisions are made by unelected secretive men who operate in the shadows and use their wealth to direct the decision making of the politicians, government bureaucrats, and corporate entities that benefit from those decisions. Edward Bernays described a society that existed in the 19th Century, 20th Century, and has now grown to immense proportions in the 21st Century:
“Political campaigns today are all sideshows. A presidential candidate may be ‘drafted’ in response to ‘overwhelming popular demand,’ but it is well known that his name may be decided upon by half a dozen men sitting around a table in a hotel room. The conscious manipulation of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country.” – Edward Bernays
The manipulation of the masses has been perfected by the ruling class through decades of corporate mass media messaging the purposeful dumbing down of the populace through government public school education that teaches children how to feel rather than how to think. The conscious manipulation of the masses has been designed to produce obedient non-thinking consumers of corporate products, educated to believe the accumulation of material goods with debt constitutes wealth, to fear whatever the government tells them to fear, and never look up from their iGadgets long enough to actually think for themselves. We are bombarded with Orwellian memes designed to keep us sedated and pliant, as the ruling class pillages the national wealth and expands their power and control over our lives.
Conform; Stay Asleep; Do Not Question Authority; Obey; Consume; Reproduce; Submit; Watch TV; Buy; Follow; Doubt Humanity; No New Ideas; Feel, Don’t Think; Fear; Accumulate; Honor Apathy; Believe Experts; Surrender; Spend; No Independent Thought; Win; Want More; Hate; Succumb To Desire; Yield To Power; Choose Safety Over Liberty; Choose Security Over Freedom
This insane world was created through decades of bad decisions, believing in false prophets, choosing current consumption over sustainable long-term savings based growth, electing corruptible men who promised voters entitlements that were mathematically impossible to deliver, the disintegration of a sense of civic and community obligation and a gradual degradation of the national intelligence and character.
Vonnegut and Huxley’s social commentary reveals a basic truth that societies and human beings have been prone to bouts of madness over the course of decades and centuries. Humans are a weak species, susceptible to the vagaries of greed, lust, gluttony, wrath, sloth, envy and pride. The seven deadly sins are in full bloom today, as the American empire descends through Dante’s inferno of reality TV, celebrity worship, religious zealotry, adulation of wealthy titans, military conquest and worship of false idols.
This is where the interests of those in power and those being ruled have coincided, as a fiat based monetary system allowed unlimited spending to keep the welfare/warfare state growing, enriching the crony capitalists, deepening the power of the state, and providing the masses with foreign made trinkets, baubles, corporate logoed clothing, techno-gadgets, and pimped out financed wheels. The concepts of self-restraint, discipline, saving for a rainy day, prudence, discretion, and deferred gratification are rarely displayed in modern day America. In a case of mass delusion, Americans have convinced themselves to live for today, recklessly ignore their futures, irresponsibly spend money they don’t have on things they don’t need, neglect their civic duty towards future generations, choose ignorance over knowledge, and vote for spineless politicians who promise them entitlements that are mathematically impossible to honor. The public’s foolish attitude towards debt accumulation matches the arrogance of our gutless intellectually dishonest leaders.”
Gregory Mannarino, "Alert! Alert! Banks Warn On New Variant; An ER Dr Comes Forward to Tell The Truth"
Gregory Mannarino, PM 11/26/21:
"Alert! Alert! Banks Warn On New Variant;
An ER Dr Comes Forward to Tell The Truth"
"No Victms..."
“Life has no victims. There are no victims in this life. No one has the right to point fingers at his/her past and blame it for what he/she is today. We do not have the right to point our finger at someone else and blame that person for how we treat others, today. Don’t hide in the corner, pointing fingers at your past. Don’t sit under the table, talking about someone who has hurt you. Instead, stand up and face your past! Face your fears! Face your pain! And stomach it all! You may have to do so kicking and screaming and throwing fits and crying – but by all means – face it! This life makes no room for cowards.”
- C. Joybell C.
"Give Thanks for the One Percent"
"Give Thanks for the One Percent"
by Bill Bonner
BALTIMORE, MARYLAND – "This week, a hush falls over headquarters. Office phones ring with no one to answer them. But we continue our lonely vigil, watching over the world of money… dumbstruck by the complex majesty of it… and a little bummed out by the scammy fraud perpetrated by Federal Reserve economists
We drove out of the city to look at a colleague’s new house. The house is on farmland in one of the most attractive suburbs, just 15 minutes from the heart of Baltimore It is a huge, rambling affair built in the 1870s, with a large wing for servants added in the 1920s. One of Baltimore’s leading lawyers had owned it. His widow lived there until she died in her 90s Now, under a new owner, the house is about to get a major facelift. New wiring, new plumbing… walls torn down… a new master suite… an addition for utilities… a four-car garage… a toolshed transformed into a “man cave.”
No Holding Back: Our friend is not one to hold back. He lives large… no matter what the cost. The house already has more than 9,000 square feet of space. When he’s finished, it will probably have more than 10,000. “You are aware that this is going to cost a fortune,” we said to the new owner.
“Yeah. How much do you think it will cost to fix this place up?” “Five million?” “Oh, and I’m going to tear up all the floors and put in radiant heat. And a new kitchen. “Six million? This is crazy. It’s a nice house. Why not just live in it as it is? All you really need to do is to put in a new bathroom. Okay, maybe a new kitchen. But why buy a nice old house just to tear it up?”
"You are such a penny-pincher. What is money for, if you can’t use it to build the house you want where you want it? I don’t get any pleasure out of looking at my account balance. I’ll get real pleasure for many years out of this house. “I don’t mind spending money. It’s fun. I’m not like Warren Buffett. And I’m not like you. I don’t want to live in a simple house in Omaha all my life. And I don’t care about creating a family legacy. I’m going to enjoy my money.”
Economist’s Dream: Our friend is an economist’s dream. He consumes mightily. His consumption makes him happy. And it sets in motion hundreds of wheels that turn toward more getting and spending all over Baltimore, the U.S., and the world.
The Financial Times elaborates: "Consumption is the purpose of economic activity and allows us to meet our material aspirations in the pursuit of happiness. The valid concern about household debt is therefore not that it is fuelling consumption, but that it might detract from future expenditure because, for prudent families, debt service gets in the way of other spending. The elderly and the dead, who realized their property assets, tend not to spend so much.
Naturally, there are legitimate concerns about the sustainability of the recovery, but most are not related to consumption… Consumption growth is therefore necessary for the sustainable longer-term growth that people of a puritanical bent so desire… The alternative to the unexpected boost to consumption this year would have been much worse: continued stagnation, higher unemployment, lower incomes and worse public finances."
So, as the year’s end approaches, we should resist the puritan within all of us. Let us celebrate consumption…
In Honor of Spendthrifts: Our friend is doing his part. The marble for his new countertops will be cut in Italy… making employment for stonecutters and shippers. Carpenters will spend months knocking together frames and staircases. Heating and air-conditioning specialists, architects, wallpaper salesmen, decorators, roofers, electricians, plumbers, surveyors – all will be contracted to help our friend build the house of his dreams..
Will they stop a moment and say a little prayer for the system that has brought them such bounty? Will they say thanks to “the 1%” – the only ones with enough money to take on such big-spending projects? Not likely. Instead, they will grouse about how little they got and hold the source of it in contempt. But at least here at the Diary, we will raise a glass – or two – in honor of the spendthrifts who keep the wheels turning. And we give special thanks for that little subset of the 1% – those who provide a public good by sacrificing their own balance sheets for the benefit of the consumer economy. Yes, they will be poorer – financially – but at least they will have nice houses to live in when the next crisis comes."
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Well Mr. Bonner, I think the 1% should be given "something", commensurate with their psychopathic economic crimes against Humanity, but I don't think they'd like it... I don't dare express what I really feel about them, they'd disappear this blog in a second.
"Stipendium peccati mors est."
- CP
"We Don't Talk About Collapse To Revel In It, We Talk About Collapse to Prevent It"
"We Don't Talk About Collapse To Revel In It,
We Talk About Collapse to Prevent It"
by Charles Hugh Smith
"Those of us who discuss collapse are generally dismissed as doom-and-gloomers, the equivalent of people who watch dash-cam videos of vehicle crashes all day, reveling in disaster. Why would we spend so much effort discussing collapse if we didn't long for it?
Those dismissing us all as doom-and-gloomers hoping for collapse have it backward: yes, some long for collapse as a real-life disaster movie, but those discussing collapse in systems terms are trying to avoid it, not revel in it.
If the system is vulnerable beneath a surface stability, then the only way to avoid negative consequences is to understand those vulnerabilities/fragilities and work out systemic changes that reduce those risks. It's not the analysis of vulnerabilities that causes collapse, it's refusing to look at vulnerabilities because to do so is considered negative. Why not be optimistic and just go with the consensus that the status quo is impervious to serious disruption? Can-do optimism is all that's needed to overcome any spot of bother.
The problem is humanity's propensity to confuse optimism with magical thinking. This confusion is particularly visible in any discussion of energy. The status quo holds that every problem has a technological solution, and doubting this optimism is dismissed as naysaying: "why can't you be positive?"
I consider myself an optimist in the sense that I see solutions that are within reach if we change our definition of the problem so we can enable new solutions. I consider myself a practical, pragmatic optimist because I understand from life experience that systemic solutions generally require arduous transformations that will demand great effort and sacrifice. In many cases, this process is mostly a series of failures and disappointments that are the essential parts of a steep learning curve. But little of this basic awareness is visible in media descriptions of "solutions."
Thus every advance in a lab somewhere is immediately touted as the globally scalable solution: algae-based fuel, modular nuclear reactors, new battery designs, etc., in an endless profusion of technologies which are 1) not even to the prototype stage 2) cannot be scaled 3) limited to specific uses 4) require the construction of new infrastructure 5) consume vast resources to be built, including hydrocarbons 6) are not renewable as they must be replaced every 10-15 years 7) are not cost-effective once externalities are included 8) are intrinsically impractical due to complexity, dependency on rare minerals, etc.
All this "optimism" is actually 95% magical thinking, as the practical, real-world realities are dismissed or glossed over: "Oh, they'll figure all that out." In other words, throw enough money and talent at a problem ("We went to the moon, so anything is possible!") and it will always be solved in a way that's bigger and better. This is not optimism, this is magical thinking being passed off as optimism. Real optimism is cautious and contingent, hyper-aware that solutions are a dependency chain that only reach cost-effective scalability if an entire chain of circumstances and advances line up just right.
There's another source of confusing optimism and magical thinking: being too successful for too long. Former Intel CEO Andy Grove discussed this in his book "Only the Paranoid Survive,": once an organization reckons it has succeeded and has everything necessary to continue achieving success without making any systemic changes, then it's doomed to decay and eventual collapse.
When success becomes the default then all the hard parts of success - sacrifices made, failures mopped up, gambles that didn't pay off and gambles that did - melt away and all that's left is a sunny confidence that somebody somewhere will work out a solution that scales up to solve the problem for all of us: "We have top people working on it - top people!" Meanwhile, back in the real world, it takes 20 years to get a new bridge approved and built in the U.S., 20 years for a new subway line approved and built and 20 years to get a new landfill approved.
We're supposed to make the leap to a renewable zero-net-carbon future in 20 years and we can't even build one new-design nuclear reactor prototype in 20 years, even as we'd need hundreds of new reactors to replace a significant slice of hydrocarbon consumption. But if you dare to point out this painfully visible discrepancy between the real-world difficulties in getting a single prototype built in less than 20 years and the claim that we're going to transition away from hydrocarbons in 20 years, then you're a doom-and-gloomer, a naysayer who derives some bitter pleasure from shooting down optimists working on painless, sacrifice-free techno-solutions.
The essence of magical thinking is the belief that the long dependency chain between the idea/lab experiment and a solution that's cost-effective and scales up to serve everyone will always fall into place because it's always fallen into place in the past, and so there's no reason to doubt that all the pieces will fall into place going forward.
This is magical thinking because it has zero interest in the real-world constraints embedded in each link in the long chain. If you bring up any of these constraints, the magical thinking "optimist" is immediately annoyed and accuses you of being a bitter naysayer. The idea that there might be real-world constraints that "top people" can't overcome is rejected as naysaying.
The possibility that there might be systemic constraints is rejected out of hand because "anything's possible if we throw enough money and talent at it." There will always be a solution/substitute which will be affordable and sacrifice-free.
That all the previous examples of this were enabled by our exploitation of the easiest-to-extract hydrocarbon wealth is overlooked as a footnote. This leaves us all frustrated. Those of us grounded in the real world are frustrated that if we bring up any real-world constraints--for example, those wondrous untapped ore deposits that are going to make all these new techno-wonders cheap and quick and easy are far from paved highways, far from major river or bluewater ports, far from processing plants, and far from sources of the millions of liters of diesel fuel that will be needed onsite to extract the ores - then we're bitter naysayers who can't bear optimism and easy success, while the magical thinking "optimists" are frustrated that we're not accepting the technocratic religion that "top people" and a tsunami of money will solve any problem.
One thing I've noticed is "top people" (actual experts with long experience) are never the ones hyping some new technology as the pain-free affordable solution unless they're paid shills of special interests. Then they hype nuclear reactors as the solution without mentioning the problem of what to do with the waste, to name one constraint "optimists" inevitably ignore.
In the real world, the hard part is getting every link of the long dependency chain to work reliably and at a cost that's sustainable/affordable. Success comes not from blithely dismissing constraints as naysaying but from accepting most potential solutions will fail due to issues for which there is no cost-effective, practical, scalable fix. On a systemic level, this requires questioning whether the system itself has to change if we want a different result. If one possible result of the current system is collapse, realizing the system itself must be changed isn't doom-and-gloom, it's problem-solving."
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Related:
11/26/21: "The Bloodbath Has Arrived"
"Economic Market Snapshot AM 11/26/21"
"Economic Market Snapshot AM 11/26/21"
"Capitalism is the astounding belief that the most wickedest of men will
do the most wickedest of things for the greatest good of everyone."
- John Maynard Keynes
"The more I see of the monied classes,
the better I understand the guillotine."
- George Bernard Shaw
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